If you want to try before you download, you can simply head over to wikiwand.com and search for any topic. The Google Glass article on Wikiwand is a good example. All the extension does is basically redirect all Wikipedia articles to Wikiwand, making the switch effortless.

After it’s installed, clicking on any Wikipedia link will automatically redirect you to the article on the Wikiwand website, which means that you can continue browsing the Web as normal, and all Wikipedia articles will be automagically much nicer to browse.

Browsing Wikipedia

Wikiwand utilizes large pictures from the Wikipedia entry to create a stunning background/header that slowly folds away as you scroll down. The semi-transparent Wikiwand bar along the top will also disappear as you scroll down, but it pops back up by simply hovering your mouse over it.

The grey bar along the left side is my favorite part of the app because it scrolls with you as you scroll through the article, allowing you to see which section you’re in, and allowing for easy switching between sections. It makes for a much more fluid reading experience.

However, you can collapse the grey sidebar if you prefer to have a full-screen article simply by clicking the three bars in the top left.

On top of all of that, Wikiwand is hugely customizable. Switch between a Serif and a Sans Serif font, switch from a white to a black background, adjust text size, and adjust the column width. Your reading experience is truly yours on Wikiwand.

You can even switch between languages with the button to the right of the settings button and share articles in an instant with the button to the left of the settings. Plus, the search bar along the top means no more scrolling all the way back up to the top of a Wikipedia article just to search for something else.

Pinning this website to your Taskbar or Dock in Chrome is simple: navigate to Wikiwand News, click the options button (hamburger menu) in the upper right, select More tools, and select Create application shortcuts. You can then choose between having a desktop shortcut or Taskbar shortcut on Windows, and selecting either of these will open Wikiwand News in a separate window without an address bar.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a similar way to create a shortcut to the random article site in a single click, since going to the random article site immediately redirects you to a random article.

There is something close, though. On Windows, you can right-click on your desktop, select New, and select Shortcut, and then enter the random article URL: http://www.wikiwand.com/random/en

This shortcut will open the random article in your default browser. On Windows, you can drag and drop it into the Taskbar on the icon of your default Internet browser, and it will “pin” it to the browser, so that right-clicking on the browser icon will allow you to quickly access it.

Using one of these methods, you should be able to quickly and easily access current news or random Wikipedia articles using Wikiwand.

What’s Your Favorite Way To Browse Wikipedia?

Wikiwand is a fantastic and gorgeous browser extension that should greatly improve your Wikipedia experience, but maybe you’ve heard of something better.

What’s your favorite way of browsing Wikipedia? Do you have any tips for users who want to quickly open up a random article? Let us know in the comments!

because people need to cite sources. also, it's not edited by "anyone" most high profile articles are locked down to people with good reputations in the wikipedia community, and even those that can be edited by anyone have their edits looked over a regular basis. there's a huge community and staff behind wikipedia that keeps it accurate, unbiased, and update. it's a fantastic source of information that's just as good if not better than other forms of information like the encyclopedia britannica.